From November 17th to 25th, the 61st edition of the Gijón International Film Festival is consolidating its position as an unmissable cultural event. In its eagerness to broaden our vision of the world and bring us closer to other realities, the FICX bets, with an unwavering personality, for the best independent cinema. In its 61st edition, the Festival offers a wide program that includes the plurality of national and international cinema in a fair balance between renowned filmmakers and emerging talents. In its Official Selection, all the films will have their absolute premiere in Spain, and in some cases worldwide, in Gijón. In turn, FICX offers support to all the selected films to achieve a commercial release.
Albar: names that consolidate the identity of FICX
The prestigious South Korean director and FICX regular, Hong Sang-soo, returns to the screen with two new films. With the ability to deal with profound themes in a simple way, Nuestro día, selected to compete in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, masterfully captures fragments of everyday life of its various characters. On the other hand, in In Water, Hong Sang-soo proposes a film that is literally out of focus; a stylistic challenge that tells the story of a first-time director, a novice camera operator and a well-known actress who is out of focus. The film was included in the Encounters Section of the Berlin Film Festival.
Nuestro día by Hong Sang-soo
French filmmaker Catherine Corsini, Special Jury Mention at the 59th edition of FICX for her film Le Fracture, premieres Le retour, a story about identity and the desire to return to one’s place of origin, which was screened in the Official Selection at Cannes.
Triple award-winner at the Karlovy Vary Festival, La lección de Blaga, by Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev, focuses on its brilliant protagonist. Actress Eli Skorcheva plays a woman with strong morals who begins to question her own principles.
La lección de Blaga by Stephan Komandarev
Le grand chariot is the new feature film by renowned French filmmaker Philippe Garrel, for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale. Co-written with screenwriters of the stature of Jean-Claude Carrière, the film features performances by Garrel’s own children to fictionalize the story of a family of puppeteers in a clear parallel to his own legacy and love for the craft.
Le grand chariot by Philippe Garrel
Following her participation in the Official Selection of the Venice Film Festival, Belgian filmmaker Fien Troch presents Holly, the story of a young girl who, after a bad feeling, decides not to go to school on the day of a fire. The families of the victims begin to believe that the young woman has the gift of working miracles.
In Baltimore, the latest film by Irish filmmakers Christine Molloy & Joe Lawlor, protagonist of one of this year’s FICX Spotlights, the story focuses on Rose Dugdale; a woman who in 1974 rebelled against her English social class to enlist as a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. The film, programmed out of competition, will have its Spanish premiere at the Festival in the Albar Official Selection.
In addition to these titles, the already announced films No esperes demasiado del fin del mundo, by Radu Jude; El último verano, by Catherine Breillat; and Eureka, by Lisandro Alonso.
Retueyos: the new looks of cinema
After the release of his first feature film in 2017, Bajo la piel de lobo, Asturian filmmaker Samu Fuentes returns with Los últimos pastores to offer an apt portrait of the disappearing way of life of two brothers, shepherds of Picos de Europa. The film will have its world premiere at FICX.
Los últimos pastores by Samu Fuentes
Likewise, it will have its world premiere El cine, 5; by the also Asturian Elisa Cepedal who, after a strong career in short films, premiered at FICX in 2019 her debut feature El trabajo o a quién le pertenece el mundo. This time she presents a film that starts from the photographs of the filmmaker’s own grandfather to approach the character of Barredos, a mining town facing depopulation and oblivion.
In 2014 the French filmmaker of Georgian descent, Marie Amachoukeli, presented at FICX A Mil noches, una boda (Party Girl); first film co-directed with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis for which they were to win the Camera d’Or at Cannes. Almost ten years later, the filmmaker offers us her second feature film, premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week: Àma Gloria approaches with deep sensitivity the bond created between a French girl and her Cape Verdean nanny.
Àma Gloria by Marie Amachoukeli
De Facto is the second film by Austrian-born Bosnian director Selma Doborac, who, with the rigor of a parliament that admits no distractions, offers us a political and philosophical film, an intellectual challenge that won the Caligari Film Prize at the last Berlinale, and that incites us to analyze the destructive mechanisms of human beings.
Also on view at the Berlinale was Concrete Valley, by French-Canadian Antoine Bourges, a film that narrates the vicissitudes and efforts that a Syrian family has to face to rebuild their lives in a new place; and Matronas, the third feature film by French director Léa Fehner, which manages to create an organic portrait of her country’s healthcare system through the experience of two midwives who have just started out in the profession.
Matronas by Léa Fehner
O auto das ánimas is the debut of Galician Pablo Lago Dantas; an encounter with his place of origin and his family, tradition, death and the passing of time. It was premiered in the Official Section of Visions du Reél and was supported by FICX in 2020 during the PUSH PLAY Work-in-Progress.
O auto das ánimas by Pablo Lago Dantas
Following its screening in the Bright Future Section of the Rotterdam Festival, the debut feature by Romanian director Andrei Tănase, Day of the Tiger, brings us closer to the life of a veterinarian who, in the midst of a deep life crisis, mistakenly leaves open the cage of a tiger in the zoo where she works. This negligence somehow hides a metaphor about the escape from the cage that encloses her own existence.
Day of the Tiger by Andrei Tănase
This selection is in addition to the previously announced feature films in the Retueyos Official Selection: Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, by Elene Naveriani; Chicken for Linda! by Chiara Malta & Sébastien Laudenbach; and Locals, by Måns Nyman.
Tierres en trance: an intimately political view of Ibero-America
La prisión de mi padre is the first film by Venezuelan Iván Andrés Simonovis Pertíñez; a documentary thriller in which the filmmaker recounts the consequences for him and his family of his father’s conviction as a political prisoner in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. The film competed in the Official Selection of the Swiss festival Visions du Réel.
La prisión de mi padre by Iván Andrés Simonovis Pertíñez
In her third film, Las cosas indefinidas, the Argentinean filmmaker María Aparicio demonstrates a great ability to reflect on the nature of images and the film editing process. The film was screened at prestigious film festivals such as Valdivia, Hamburg and FIDMarseille.
À procura da estrela is the first feature film as a director by Carlos Martínez-Peñalver Mas, assistant editor of Mimosas, Oliver Laxe’s Cannes award-winning film. In his debut, he tells the story of a Galician sound recordist who searches the mountains of Portugal for sounds of the past.
À procura da estrela by Carlos Martínez-Peñalver Mas
After being screened in the Forum Section at the Berlinale, FICX premieres Luis Alejandro Yero’s debut film in Spain. Llamadas desde Moscú follows four queer Cuban exiles seeking political asylum in Moscow shortly before the invasion of Ukraine is announced.
Llamadas desde Moscú by Luis Alejandro Yero
Los restos del pasar, by Luis (Soto) Muñoz Cubillo & Alfredo Picazo, will be screened at the Gijón Festival after having won awards at the past editions of Semilleru Lab and FICXXPro. The film is born as a beautiful approach to the portrait of the Easter Week traditions lived by its authors.
This list of new films completes the Tierres en trance Official Selection, which also includes the previously announced Légua, by Filipa Reis & João Miller Guerra; Las demás, by Alexandra Hyland, and Muertes y maravillas, by Diego Soto.
Official Short Film Section: Diversity and Avant-Garde
Three sisters separated by the eruption of a volcano sing a traditional Ukrainian song. With As filhas do fogo, the eminent Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa returns to the FICX after appearing in the Official Selection at Cannes.
As filhas do fogo by Pedro Costa
With black humour and high doses of irony, German director Hilke Rönnfeldt analyses human hypocrisy in A Study of Empathy, Golden Leopard for Best Short Film at the Locarno Festival. Also from Locarno, Loving in Between, a short film by South African director Jyoti Mistry about how social norms and cultural taboos control who we love and how.
Celia Viada Caso, Asturian filmmaker who received seven awards at FICX in 2020 for her debut film La calle del agua, premieres Gregoria, a short film with which she approaches the everyday life of a fascinating woman who dedicated her life to working in the vegetable garden and selling her products at the El Fontán market.
Gregoria by Celia Viada Caso
Julio Hernández Cordón’s Los rayos de una tormenta tells the story and memory of Mexico City’s most important tree. The short film was screened at the New York Film Festival and FIDMarseille.
Los rayos de una tormenta by Julio Hernández Cordón
Gunnur Martinsdóttir Schlüter’s Fár is an exploration of what happens when the laws of business and the laws of nature come together. The short film won a Special Jury Mention at Cannes.
The discovery of love and sexual awakening are reflected in El silencio de los niños, by Costa Rican Sofía Quirós Ubeda. The film won a Special Jury Mention at the Mar del Plata Festival and the Best National Short Film Award at the Costa Rica Festival.
The FICX, with the common objective of favouring visibility and the sustainability of resources, shares three short film premieres with the Bilbao Documentary and Short Film Festival ZINEBI. Among these titles is the latest work by Catalan filmmaker Neus Ballús, Blow!, in which she takes an approach to the whales that appear in the Mediterranean for a few weeks a year; Betiko Gaua, the directorial debut of the winner of a Goya for Best New Actor in 2018 for Handía, Eneko Sagardoy; and In a Nearby Field, a short film by Laida Lertxundi and Ren Ebel filmed in 16 mm, which interweaves beauty and time to magnify small domestic gestures.
Betiko Gaua by Eneko Sagardoy
Using the same type of 16mm analogue recording, Yohann Kouam’s Après L’Aurore tells the story of three lonely characters in the heart of a suburban district.
In 2720, filmmaker Basil da Cunha explores life in Lisbon’s underground construction district of Reboleira. The short film won the Audience Award at the Portuguese festival Curtas Vila do Conde and was selected for the Swiss competition Visions du réel.
2720 by Basil da Cunha
Pablo García Canga draws inspiration for Tu trembleras pour moi from the life of Stanisława Przybyszewska, a Polish playwright renowned for her works on the French Revolution.
With a style reminiscent of filmmakers such as Wes Anderson and Jean Pierre-Jeunet, Héctor Herce’s Largo viaje is a colourful odyssey that follows a young boy on an adventure to get his birthday present. The short film won, in its development phase, the Movistar Plus+ Short Film Project Award in 2022 granted by FICX.
Largo viaje by Héctor Herce,
